Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952

The policy I have picked to discuss is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act. I feel like this is an important policy to discuss because there is a lot of talk on both sides about whether it is right or wrong to deport foreign students who are in the United States on a temporary student visa for protesting against Israel and starting riots on college campuses and causing the Jewish students to feel unsafe on campus. 

Honestly, I am not a Republican at all, but I do agree with some of the statements they have on this subject. Marco Rubio put it well in a press conference where he said, if these students had told us that they were coming into the United States to start riots on campuses, take over buildings, fight back when police are telling them to go home, then they never would have been allowed entry in the first place. All of these people are begging to come into the United States; they all claim they are in danger and they need help from the U.S., and then when some of them do stuff like this, it is very disrespectful. They know they can get away with it in the United States because if they went protesting in other countries around the world, they could easily come up missing and never be seen or heard from again. These 20-year-old kids thought they knew everything, and the ones that have been caught are going to get a huge reality check. These kids were all grad school students on their way to a bright future, and they weren’t smart enough not to mess with police when they tell them to do something? 

I just feel sorry for the ones who are caught because they will make examples out of them to try to prevent other foreign students here on student visas from doing the exact same thing. In fact, they are investigating students on visas in the U.S. in different Universities to see if they have any ties to Hamas or any other terror groups out there. They are violent people who do not care about human life. Hamas has no empathy for anyone or any decency; their whole objective is to inflict violence and terrorize people so that nobody questions anything they do based on fear, and these are the same people that these students in the United States of America are protesting for? I think it is nuts, I think all this killing is wrong, but you can’t expect to go into Israel and kill people and take hostages and terrorize the Jews and expect them not to come back and defend themselves. I mean, let’s be realistic: nobody would let that slide, so now Gaza has been blown up to pieces and it is not the Americans’ fault, it is not Israel’s fault, this is Hamas fault—they started all of this, and if these kids want to protest to anyone, it should be protesting against Hamas asking them to surrender and release all of the hostages. Those are the only people who should be getting their land vandalized and set on fire, and buildings destroyed, and leave the American Universities alone.

On the other hand, from the students’ point of view, I can see how this seems unfair that they have been arrested and are about to be deported because free speech in America does not seem to be a right of theirs. College is one of those times in your life that is controversial anyway, and when you add in something like a current and active war going on, it is a recipe for disaster. I understand people want to be seen and heard from, and have their opinions heard, but in my opinion, this is the worst place to do it is on the world stage, especially when you know that so many other people do not agree and you are going against the view of the country you are living in. In other words, you know you are ruffling some feathers, so don’t be surprised when you have a lot of people who are very angry with you. 

I do see how this could be intimidating for other students to feel like they can even get through school now without upsetting somebody. As much as I believe it is very stupid and disrespectful to our nation to vandalize the streets and occupy buildings, and go up against armed police. That is never a good idea, and once again, complete disrespect for law enforcement, who had nothing to do with any of this. 

I can also empathize with these foreign students. They have got to be living a rough life in the U.S. these days, having to constantly worry about I.C.E. coming after them for no reason, or being taken by surprise at any point in their day. It has to be terrifying to live like that, and most of these students are great people. Many of our foreign students are very bright and bring a lot of great knowledge along with them when they come to get educated in the United States. A lot of them are very family-oriented people who are very friendly and easy to get along with and make great neighbors as well as students and employees. I understand how these students who are under arrest feel like they have been cheated and that it is unfair, but the problem is, it has to stop somehow, and when these migrants were not even reacting to law enforcement, then honestly, deportation is really their only next card to play. 

Hopefully, after this blows over and these protestors learn that they cannot just come into this country and do whatever they feel like, and learn to respect the land and the people, then there really shouldn’t be any more issues. I do not necessarily agree with deporting these young college students on their first offense, maybe a couple months in jail and some time on probation would be better for them than just sending them home, but then again a lot of them were supposedly tied to Hamas, so if that is true they have to go, but it is just hard to tell what is true and what is not true anymore. It has become difficult to decipher the truth because each news platform tells the same story in 5 different versions, so you have to stay updated as much as possible so you know what is going on at all times.

This is a bit more informal than I would have liked.  It is a good reaction essay, but to present a neutral and descriptive paper about an issue, I think it would be better to try to establish what the issues are.

The policy that is controversial is the new policy of finding international students who have expressed opinions hostile to the state of Israel (or possibly merely hostile to the American government policy of supporting Israel) and then taking away their student visas and deporting them. 

You have touched on some of the main issues used to support or oppose this policy.

In support of the policy, I understand that some sources are reporting that students whose visas have been revoked and students who have been deported may have been doing two things: 1) they may have been intimidating other students with hate speech and creating a hostile environment at their schools; and 2) they may have broken laws such as trespassing laws by occupying buildings.  You mention that some students may have been engaged in physical fights with security guards or police, which would be a third allegation that the students had broken laws or harmed the educational atmosphere.  

If these allegations about the students are true, there could still be a controversy, since one position would be that these students ought to be treated like any American student would be treated, and given the discipline or fairly mild penalties our justice system employs in these sorts of situations.  

As for supporting Hamas with words or slogans or signs, I do not think that would be a crime if we really valued human rights and freedom of speech and conscience. Sending money to Hamas or accepting support from Hamas to spread their point-of-view in the United States could be illegal, since Hamas has been (correctly) identified as a terrorist organization. 

However, given the activities of the Israeli Defense Force, it seems to me there could be a plausible and reasonable argument that the Israeli military has descended to the same sort of behavior associated with Hamas.  That is, the IDF has become a terrorist organization, and receiving support from Israel or its public relations organizations in the United States could be made illegal, and giving any material support to Israel could be declared illegal.  That's not going to happen.  The American government is going to continue sending weapons to Israel, even if Israel starts to behave with a genocidal attack on Palestinians.  I'm just staying that someone could make a reasonable claim that there is some moral equivalence between Israel's current behavior in Gaza and the behavior of Hamas in Israel back in October of 2023. 

One argument against the policy is the claim that many of the students whose student visas have been revoked or who have been arrested and expelled from the United States did not do anything wrong.  They did not create a hostile learning environment or offer any hate speech against Jews or Israelis, nor did they occupy buildings, nor did they riot or damage property or assault anyone.  Some of them have simply written editorials opposing Israel's methods of killing Palestinians in Gaza or stealing land in the West Bank. If all the students do is voice opposition to Israeli policies or military practice, or America's support for Israeli's military, then that is surely an example of people using their freedom of speech.  In other words, they are using their natural liberty, bestowed by the Creator as an unalienable right, and only tyrannical power would punish them for using their natural right to free expression and freedom of conscience. 

I have heard people claim that criticism of Israel or “current criticisms against Israel or the Israeli Defense Forces” are all anti-semitic or anti-Jewish.  No doubt some such criticisms are indeed anti-Jewish and anti-semitic. But it makes no sense to claim that all criticisms against Israel these days are racist anti-Jewish.  I will criticize militaries that bomb refugee camps, kill children, blow up ambulances, and fight wars in which there is almost no regard for the risk of civilian casualties.  An army which claims there are no innocent civilians in the population of children and non-combatants in Gaza is not an army I think anyone should support.  There are international laws and rules of war, and an army or government that ignores international law or rules of war deserves condemnation, even if its cause is just, or it has historically been victimized by aggression of neighbors and terrorism used by its enemies. 

There are similar issues about freedom of speech and allowing or encouraging foreign students to come to the United States to study in our universities.  What about students from China who come to the United States and then create a hostile environment for Taiwanese students, Hong Kong students, Tibetan students, or Islamic students with central Asian backgrounds from Xinjiang?  What about Chinese students who come to our University of Illinois to learn about facial recognition software, and then take this learning back to China where they implement it in helping the Chinese Communist Party track dissidents and crack down on people who oppose the abuses of power by some members of the Chinese Communist Party?  What about Chinese students who come to America to study, but also to conduct industrial espionage?  Naturally, most Chinese students have no interest in those types of anti-democratic activities, but a few do.  And, certainly Chinese students have a right to express their opinions when they are here, even if their opinions are genocidal ideas about destroying Tibetan culture, mass murder of Taiwanese people, or elimination of the Uyghurs and their culture in Xindian? 

A strength of our country is that we allow criticism of our society and our government and its policies.  So, with that strength, we ought to allow foreign students to offer criticisms of us and what we do, and we should welcome their participation in demonstrations, editorial-writing, and participation in political practice to encourage America to change in ways that they think would be best.  However, an alternative perspective is that as guests in our country, foreign students ought to respect our culture and our government, and be quiet and mild in their criticisms of our society or our government's policies. This second approach emphasizes the idea that guests in our country must submit to having us dictate their behavior and speech, and we have a right to expect that foreign visitors conform to our expectations of how they should behave.  The first approach claims that our value on the freedom of expression and freedom to assemble and freedom of conscience is the primary value, and we should not care at all about whatever foreign residents or students say when they are in our country—it is a free country and everyone can say whatever they please.

I think that a policy of punishing people for writing editorials is unconstitutional.   Ejecting international students who express opinions at demonstrations or in editorials is a form of tyranny over the minds of people, exactly the sort of thing that Thomas Jefferson detested: "for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." (letter to Benjamin Rush of September 23, 1800).

The same people who rightly condemned excesses in speech codes and woke language police scolding seem too eager to abandon their principles of holding freedom of speech sacred if the speech to be protected is condemnation of Israel or criticism of the United States. 

The McCarran-Walter Act upheld national origin quotas, but it allowed some Asians to immigrate to America, which had generally been difficult or forbidden since the 1880s. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act)  was the one that abolished national origin quotas that had favored northern and western Europeans over Africans, Asians, Eastern Europeans, and immigrants from the Western Hemisphere.